In the News

Hudson River - Cable Installation Campaign

06/15/17 - Williamson & Associates engineering personnel stand down from a mission to support plough installation of a new submarine power cable in the Hudson River.

SOLO NetView - Delivery and Field Trials

06/15/17 - Williamson & Associates delivers the first Solo NetView unit to Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The successful initial trials are supported by Williamson technicians on board who also took the opportunity to learn more about field deployment.

WA 30-120 – Deep Water Sonar Search

01/15/17 - Williamson & Associates completes six month geophysical survey in the central Pacific for private customers. Water depth in survey area ranged from 2,800- 5,800m.

Deep Water Sidescan Sonar Survey – Pacific Ocean

Washington Coast Debris Survey – Washington, USA

9/22/15 - Williamson & Associates completed a local survey task, mobilizing a vessel of opportunity from the company's home town of Seattle, WA. The survey deployed the AMS-60 in up to several hundred meters of water and successfully located the intended objects despite marginal weather conditions.

Western Atlantic Debris Survey – Florida, USA

8/3/15 - Williamson & Associates completed a debris survey with the AMS-60 deep tow sidescan sonar in up to 1000m of water off the eastern seaboard of the USA. Targets as small as 1m were detected on the wide-swath AMS-60 for follow-up investigation.

ROCS Drill Delivered – Seattle, WA

3/19/15 - Williamson & Associates delivered a bespoke rock drill to Williamson's original design to an international client.

Caribbean Cable Route Survey – Bridgetown, Barbados

3/12/15 - Williamson & Associates completed a hydrographic survey in support of future cable laying operations in the south-western Caribbean. Operations were run using the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ) research vessel RV Pelagia. The Williamson team acquired excellent data with the Kongsberg EM302 multibeam echosounder, overcoming difficult marine conditions of high sea temperatures to complete the work on schedule.

NOAA Hydrographic Survey – Long Island, NY

6/23/14 - Williamson & Associates completed a hydrographic survey to map critical areas that were significantly damaged during Hurricane Sandy. Using a pole mounted R2Sonic MB and an Edgetech 4600 SSS, the team will produce high quality data that live up to stringent NOAA specifications.

High-Resolution Geophysical Survey – Calera, Chile

5/31/13 - Williamson & Associates under contract with Desmar of Viña del Mar, Chile conducted a high-resolution geophysical survey of two proposed port facilities in the Atacama Region of Chile between Caldera and Copiapó. Using a local 10m wooden swordfishing boat and a clamp on A-frame, the team was able to collect exceptional SSS, SBP and seismic data to supplement previously collected borehole data collected from the project's geotechnical phase and to investigate the area's bathymetry, stratigraphic horizons (e.g. seabed, bedrock, etc.) and anomalies (e.g. gravel patches, boulders etc.), structural features (e.g. faults, etc.), and any potential hazards to future drilling operations.

Pipeline Route Near Prince Rupert, British Columbia using ProSAS 60

10/16/12 – Williamson & Associates completed a pipeline route survey near Prince Rupert, BC, Canada using the ProSAS 60 on board the RV Aquila. The survey consisted of more than 800 line-kilometers in water depths ranging between 40-700m. Following a fjord carved deeply into the rugged Coast Mountains provided many challenging hurdles to overcome due to drastic bathymetric features, strong currents, and adverse weather. The sonar was equipped with a gap filler RESON 7125 multibeam and an EdgeTech Chirp sub-bottom profiler. All acoustic sensors were triggered from the ProSAS 60 to avoid cross talk between the various transducers.

NOAA Hydrographic Survey – Southern Penobscot Bay

9/13/12 - Williamson & Associates completed a hydrographic survey covering 40 square nautical miles in the southern portion of Penobscot Bay, ME. The survey consisted of 2,500 line kilometers utilizing two vessels with pole mounted Reson 7125 multi-beam systems in water depths up to 110 meters. A dataset with 100% multibeam coverage was provided to NOAA for the purpose of updating existing NOS nautical charts.

Manganese Nodule Survey and Sampling

8/25/12 – Williamson & Associates completed an expedition consisting of multibeam mapping and dredge sampling manganese nodules for one of the International Seabed Authority concession holders. A combination of experience working in deep water, ingenious engineering and fabrication, and some trial and error led to successful nodule sampling that exceeded the requirements of the job.

Wire line Rock Drill BMS 50 delivered to Japan

Cable Plow Control and Telemetry System

3/15/12 - Williamson & Associates designed and delivered a cable plow control and telemetry system to Italian customer that is now in use.

Pipeline Route in Australia using ProSAS 60

2/23/12 – Williamson & Associates completed a pipeline route survey in Australia using the ProSAS 60 sonar, a new 60 kHz synthetic aperture sonar. The sonar’s first commercial run was a success, achieving ten centimeter along-track and across-track resolution across a 1200 meter swath. The survey consisted of more than 3700 line-kilometers in water depths ranging between 100-1500m. This included steep escarpments with rugged submarine ridges and canyons as well as gently sloping seafloor plateau regions. The sonar was equipped with a gap filler R2Sonic 2024 multibeam, an EdgeTech Chirp sub-bottom profiler, and the existing interferometric bathymetry capability had recently been upgraded to provide beam steering capabilities, providing a 2m X 2m bin along X across track bin spacing.

Geo-Hazards and Archeological survey in Cyprus

7/18/11 - Williamson & Associates completed a geophysical hazards and archeological survey covering two drill sites in Cypriot waters. The survey consisted of 230 line-kilometers using the AMS-60 sidescan sonar and sub-bottom profiler and an EdgeTech 2000-DSS. Two contacts were determined to be of archeological significance.

Press Releases

Globe Award Goes to Williamson & Associates, Inc.

6/8/10 - Williamson & Associates, Inc., a geophysical services and ocean engineering firm of Seattle received the World Trade Center Tacoma 2010 Globe Award for the ongoing contribution it makes through international trade participation. Williamson opened its doors in Seattle in 1983 and has provided geophysical consultations with skilled personnel and state-of-the-art equipment for performing a wide range of under-water services. The company has established a broad-based international clientele and gets contracts to perform ocean mining surveys, wreck searches, telecommunications cable surveys, along with custom design and implementation of large rock drill systems.

In 2010, Williamson completed the cable route survey for the National Science Foundation and University of Washington RSN underwater observatory off Oregon, located the Australian hospital ship Centaur which was sunk in World War II off Brisbane, constructed a deep ocean wireline coring drill for the Indian government and provided equipment and personnel to assist in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also Williamson recently completed the Unity cable route survey from California to Japan, located the WWII wrecks submarine USS Grunion and Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, and delivered two rock coring drills to Japan.

Achieving a World Record in Deep Sea Drilling

8/14/06 - As part of Japan’s survey on the extension of the continental shelf, METI conducted drillings on deep seabed, in the cruise of June to July 2006. A drilling succeeded on seabed of 5,815 meters depth with 4 meters’ core sample, in the eastern sea out of Ogasawara-Chichijima. The depth 5,815 meters is a world record for the use of a suspended seabed drilling system. Furthermore, another drilling also succeeded on seabed of 5300 meters depth with core sample.

Subsea Minerals Exploration in Papau New Guinea

2005 - Williamson & Associates, Inc., a geophysical services company based in Seattle, under contract to Canadian mining giant Placer Dome, completed a survey to characterize sulfide deposits in Papua New Guinea approximately 60 km west northwest of Rabaul in the Bismarck Sea. The survey is Placer Dome’s initial involvement in the subsea minerals exploration program following a recent agreement with Nautilus Minerals Limited of Australia. Previous expeditions to the Manus Basin uncovered surprisingly rich deposits on the seafloor for which preliminary analyses averaged close to 13 grams/ton gold, 167 g/t silver, 5 percent copper, and 22 percent zinc from four holes drilled in to the top five meters of the deposit.